Cielo Uscanga

Young woman smiling at outdoor café table, orange top, pink woven bag, green café sign

PhD Candidate in Spanish

she/her/ella
109 Sproul Hall

Cielo Uscanga (b. 1998, Cuernavaca) is a Mexican poet, translator, scholar, and historian, and a Ph.D. student in Spanish at the University of California, Davis. She holds a B.A. in History from the Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia (ENAH), where she specialized in the theory and philosophy of history and served as President of the National Assembly of History Students. She earned two certificates from 17, Instituto de Estudios Críticos, one in Latin American Literature and one in Critical Imagination. Since 2017, she has presented at and helped organize more than twelve national and international conferences. Her undergraduate thesis was published by the Mediateca of Mexico's Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH), and her research article has appeared in an academic literary journal in the United States. She is the author of the poetry collection Bruma (Valparaíso Ediciones, 2026).

Her research draws on critical theory to examine expressions of grief, memory, and trauma in contemporary pan-Hispanic American testimonial poetry. Her poetry explores spirituality, memory, and the body as territories where the sacred and the everyday meet. Her writing is marked by an intimate language of deep symbolic sensibility and a constant search for reconciliation with the divine and with her origins.

Education and Degree(s)

  • Ph.D. in Spanish (in progress), University of California, Davis
  • M.A. in Spanish and Latin American Literatures and Cultures, University of California, Davis
  • B.A. in History, Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia (ENAH), Mexico City
  • Certificate, “Write Today: Latin American Literature,” 17, Instituto de Estudios Críticos
  • Certificate, “Critical Imagination: From Impasse to Passage,” 17, Instituto de Estudios Críticos

Honors and Awards

  • 2026: Programa de Estímulo a la Creación y al Desarrollo Artístico (PECDA), Secretaría de Cultura de Morelos, Mexico
  • 2024: Provost Fellowship, College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, University of Virginia

Courses

  • SPAN 4800 Language House Casa Bolivar, University of Virginia (2024-2025)
  • History and melancholy. A philosophy of becoming from loss and its specters, National School of Anthropology and History, Mexico (2024)
  • Fictions of time: stories, metaphors, and images as representation of historicity, National School of Anthropology and History, Mexico (2024)

Research Interests & Expertise

  • Latin American literature and poetry; Testimonial poetry; Grief, mourning, and trauma; Historical memory; Hauntology; Critical theory; Theory and philosophy of history; Poetic gesture; Migration; Cultural studies; Digital media

Publications

Books

  • 2026: Bruma (poetry collection). Valparaíso Ediciones, Spain.

Articles and Theses

  • 2024: “El concepto de poesía y lo que llamamos poesía.” Poéticas, no. 18. http://www.poeticas.org/index.php/poeticas/article/view/286
  • 2024: “De la creación a la crisis. El sujeto y la transfiguración poética en la poesía hispanoamericana. El boom de la poesía de consumo en el transcurso del siglo XX al XXI” [From Creation to Crisis: The Subject and Poetic Transfiguration in Spanish American Poetry. The Boom of Consumer Poetry from the Twentieth to the Twenty-First Century]. B.A. thesis, Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH), Mexico. https://repositorio.inah.gob.mx/o-357714

POETRY PUBLICATIONS, READINGS, AND EXHIBITIONS

SELECTED PRESENTATIONS AND CONFERENCES

  • 2026: “Specters of Memory: The Poetic Gesture in Fernando Valverde’s America.” Lírica de las Ruinas: Jornada Internacional en torno a la poesía de Fernando Valverde, Universidad de Puerto Rico.
  • 2026: “Fernando Valverde’s America: Mourning and Trauma Manifested through Historical Memory.” Lírica de las Ruinas: Jornada Internacional en torno a la poesía de Fernando Valverde, Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla (BUAP), Mexico.
  • 2026: “Of Ills and Remedies: Cultural Extractivism and the Exoticization of Mexican Indigenous Spirituality from the Literary Imagination.” 30th Juan Bruce-Novoa Annual Congress of Mexican Studies, University of California, Irvine.
  • 2025: “From Fake Poetry to the Synthetic Poem: A Digital Illusion of Experience.” New Lights on the Poem, 5th Conference of the International Network for the Study of Lyric, Université du Québec à Montréal.
  • 2023: “From the Poetics of Thought to the Poetics of History: The Creative Act as the Meaning of the Subject.” Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia (ENAH), Mexico City.
  • 2020: “Poetry as Resistance: The Language of the Countercultural.” Society of Historical Studies, Guadalajara, Mexico.
  • 2019: “Historical Process, Adaptation, and Conflicts of Herbology in Mexican Medicine.” Universidad de Guadalajara, Mexico.
  • 2019: “Salsa: A History of a Latin Identity Phenomenon.” Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán, Mérida, Mexico.
  • 2018: “Ills and Remedies: An Approach to Herbology and Its Development in Mexican Society.” Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Morelos, Cuernavaca, Mexico.
  • 2018: “The Survival of Indigenous Herbal Knowledge and Its Transmission in New Spain in the Second Half of the Sixteenth Century.” Universidad Autónoma de Guerrero, Mexico.

COURSES

  • SPA 1Y, Elementary Spanish. Fall 2026, Winter 2026, Fall 2025.
  • SPA 3Y, Elementary Spanish. Spring 2026.
  • SPAN 4800, Language House (Casa Bolívar), University of Virginia, 2024–2025.
  • “History and Melancholy: A Philosophy of Becoming from Loss and Its Specters,” Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia (ENAH), Mexico City, 2024.
  • “Fictions of Time: Stories, Metaphors, and Images as Representations of Historicity,” Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia (ENAH), Mexico City, 2024.